Russian Regime Increasingly ‘Hard to Call Putin’s’ Anymore, Stanovaya Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 4 – Five significant changes in Russian governance mean that it is “hard to call it Putin’s” anymore, Tatyana Stanovaya says; but that doesn’t mean that he is about to be overthrown because he still has enormous power reserves and society is still “disorganized” and fears that a future without him might be “worse.”

            What these changes do mean, the Russian analyst says, is that the powers that be “will not be capable of dialogue” with the population if it challenges the regime and that the Kremlin “will lose its ability to consolidate and speak with one voice,” developments that point to “permanent destabilization” (carnegie.ru/commentary/81975).

            The transformation of the Russian authorities in recent months may appear to have been driven by external phenomena like the coronavirus pandemic and the collapse of oil prices, but in fact, these changes began to emerge within Russia long ago and have only become more significant and more visible because of these external shocks, Stanovaya says.

            The first change, she argues, is that “the Russian powers that be have lost the ability” for running the country. They can effectively combat foreign and domestic enemies, but those challenges hardly exhaust the agenda that they must address, as the coronavirus pandemic has shown.

            In its struggle against the coronavirus, Stanovaya continues, “the Russian powers have turned out to be incapable of agreeing among themselves either on a single strategy or even single criteria for assessing the situation or general coordination.” There is no common position within the Moscow leaders or between Moscow and the regions.

            But what makes this especially worrisome is that what has been true of the fight against the coronavirus has been true of an increasing number of issues where a common approach would help but which the powers that be have proved unable of coming up with and then implementing.

            The second change as been the withering away of the rules the regime had set up and according to which people lived. “Loyalty no longer is a defense against persecution,” and “the constitution which until recently had appeared to be a holy cow has been completely remade” and thus become much less important.

            According to Stanovaya, “when a regime violates its own red lines, it is changing itself” whether it understands that or not. Putin’s efforts to rewrite the constitution are the most prominent but far from the only case where the powers have violated not only existing laws but existing understandings.

            The third change has been the increasing “inaccessibility of Putin.” He appears on television all the time, but he isn’t making decisions as he did – and the Russian people feel that, especially because there seem to be ever more questions the Kremlin leader simply has no interest in.

            The fourth change is that Putin has utterly failed to offer a vision of the future that is other than a continuation of the present. In the past, he had various goals; but now, he appears to feel he has achieved those goals and that no further changes are needed. He wants only economic growth and political quiet, hardly sufficient to mobilize the population.

            And the fifth change is that those around Putin are being forced to change the way they do things, “adjusting” to Putin’s increasing lack of attention to many issues even though that can put them at risk of incurring his anger. That may mean that Putin himself makes more mistakes because he does not have officials who will provide him with the guidance he needs.

            “The lack of long-term guidance and strategies for their achievement affect almost all spheres of state life,” Stanovaya says.  And the confusion it produces can undermine the unity and hence effectiveness of the power vertical.  Key decisions are made for emotional or short-term reasons and prove unfortunate.

            These five changes, she argues, mean that the regime that is on view in the Russian Federation today is increasingly “hard to call Putin’s.” It is simply too different from the one he put in place over the first two decades of his time in power.